Fascist Revolution?

Overshadowing every other event in the Far East this week was the abrupt appointment of Japan's arch-Fascist and patrioteer Yosuke Matsuoka as President of Japan's most potent engine of economic expansion into China, the South Manchuria Railway. This appointment ousted S. M. R.'s comparatively mild and cautious president, Count Hirotaro Hayashi, who balked schemes of Japanese jingoes to establish a Development Company for North China in which S. M. R. would hold a controlling interest. Such a company was to exploit North China, as the British East India Company exploited India a century ago.

New President Matsuoka, brilliant, ruth less, resourceful, has been called "the most Westernized of Japanese leaders and the most dangerous to the West." It was he who haughtily led Japan's delegation out of the League of Nations when Geneva tried to curb his country's invasion of Manchuria (TIME, March 6, 1933).

Brought up in the U. S. by a hardy Oregon woman, Yosuke Matsuoka was toughened by the hard knocks Japanese got in those days on the Pacific Coast, returned to Japan to become secretary to the great empire-builder, Field Marshal Prince Yamagata. Matsuoka's appointment as President of S. M. R. means that Japan's most determined militarists again dominate the Government. Smart, they put up a great smoke screen of announcements last month that War Minister General Senjuro Hayashi was appointing "milder men" to key posts.

In Japan proper the object of Fascist Matsuoka and his clique is to crush all political parties and usher in a "Showa Restoration" of imperialistic militarism sanctified by fanatical devotion to the Emperor as Son of Heaven (see below). Said the new President of S. M. R., who is expected to establish as soon as possible a Development Company for North China: "I have assumed the Presidency of the South Manchuria Railway with the firm determination to become active on the Asiatic mainland. Japan is going to start operations in North China. The arrow has left the bow! Most Japanese do not yet understand the great importance of these operations, and this lack of understanding will beyond doubt cause a really serious national crisis. The progress of these operations will decide the destiny of the Japanese race and its rise or fall in the World. To carry through these operations a domestic renovation is inevitable which is why I am a champion of Showa."

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